The Basque artist
Mattin was recently in Australia conducting a series of experimental performances, workshops and talks. He performed at the
IMA in Brisbane on the 9th of May, at the Queensland University of Technology on the 11th of May, and at Melbourne's
International Noise Conference on May the 4th. Mattin's background is in noise and improvised music and his work deals with the histories of these genres, while also staging a provocative and humorous interrogation of the rules and standards to which they adhere — the proposed anti-sociality of noise, the implicit 'freedom' in improvisation.
Brisbane collective
Disembraining Machine invited Mattin to respond to the question 'What isn't music?' - this question nods to Australia's long-running experimental festival
'What Is Music?'. The festival largely provided its own answer, embracing John Cage's maxim
'everything we do is music', philosophically assimilating all sound (and action) into the 'project' of music. This opening up of music to all sound plays out overtly in the 'noise' tradition, but the proposition is it also sidelines the discerning of experimental sound's 'non-musical' possibilities. In a context of Cageian consensus, it becomes crucial to reframe the question as a negation: What sounds remain impossible to assimilate? What isn't music?
This interview, conducted by
Joel Stern, took place at Sydney Uni on Friday the 3th of May, inside an anechoic chamber (a silent lab room where no outside sound or reflection can be heard) and an echo chamber. The previous night, Mattin had performed a concert consisting only on spoken statements and long stretches of silence.
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NON-CONCERT (an experimental non-concert was held at QUT on May 10, 2013)
Anonymous improvisation without instruments
Concert: 1660s, “agreement, accord, harmony,” from Fr.
concert (16c.), from It. concerto “concert, harmony,” from
concertare “bring into agreement,” in L.*
If a concert is based on “agreement, accord, harmony,”, then a non-concert is based on disagreement, discord, and noise. Non-idiomatic improvisation is supposed to treat all music as possible material for improvisation. But music is never just about music. In a non-concert we could use everything possible as material for improvisation: power relations, ideas, concepts, the context, history, architecture, our bodies, affects, desires, sex…
We don’t need instruments that would mediate our relation to each other and reinforce ourselves as musicians. Whether we want it or not, we all are always already performing in some way or another. There is no neutral position or activity. The question is whether we are performing an established role (such as audience or performer) or something different altogether? Something that goes beyond individual or collective authorship.
In today’s concentration camp of forced participation, where everybody in some way or other is producing some kind of value (economical, experiential, cultural…) to fall back on the notion of an abstract audience, which takes its distance or is simply the observer of an object, is no longer possible.
In whatever situation we are in, we are producing sounds however quiet these might be. Instead of judging these sounds aesthetically (which only reinforces the idea of individual taste), can we listen to these sounds or produce some new ones, in order to try to understand better what situation precisely we are living through and change it?
We can produce a different set of social relations accelerating the conflict of the individual versus the collective. Lets forget about music and musicians for the time being, and produce a social noise that cancels the fetishisation of abstract sounds. Lets move together towards the unwanted (musically, aesthetically, socially…).
If music is supposed to be organized sounds, then noise can
be disorganized listening. Anything could happen if we make it happen but if the situation turns out sterile for you, blame yourself for it.
Everybody welcome!
*http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=concert&searchmode=none